… at least… at least let him take up parts to build more space stations… or just majorly upgrade the one we have, or… something that’s just sad “oh you can fly into space I DUB THEE THE JANITOR OF THE GRAVITY WELL”

He would only encounter solar wind particles if he wandered up close to the poles. That’s what the Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis are. The Van Allen radiation belt prevents them from coming through anywhere near the equator.

Well, there’s been instances where we’ve been shown a super not having the required secondary powers to keep them safe using their power. He might be able to handle the environment of space, but still need to breathe.

And that may be accurate. Human skin can stand up to a fair amount of vacuum (maybe not a full atmosphere, but most of one). It’s the lungs and soft tissues that have major problems. Combined with hypoxia, of course. So, if his flight abilities includes any additional toughness, he may need oxygen to breathe, but not pressure to survive.

Although, this is genuinely a good service he can perform. The amount of shit we’ve put in orbit, from our very dirty, early launches, is slightly hazardous. He can get around much more easily than a spaceship, so if he can spot stuff from far enough away …

I mean home-to-duty/duty-to-duty travel reimbursement for own/public transport. When I worked for the government, it was something like 20p per mile (distance calculated, not distance actually travelled: no extras for detours), with a marginal decrease to something like 15p for journeys beyond something like 100 miles (I never went that far, so didn’t apply to me).

You can deduct a standard per-mile expense from your federal taxes. The actual reimbursement can vary from company to company.

I’m not sure if there’s a standard compensation amount for all governmental employees. Given the cluster-fuck of variance that we have from state-to-state and county-to-county, over here, I wouldn’t be surprised if the number varied wildly by region and job.

Speed of sound, therefore Mach 1, differs with a location’s altitude and the state of the medium (i.e. temperature, density, pressure, and fluid velocity) at that location.

It’s a common misconception that Mach 1 is always around 340 m/s (761 mph). Even the wikipedia entry for Mach 1 is confusing, as it explains the speed of sound changes depending on the environment, that Mach 1 depends on the speed of sound, then lists a table of Mach ranges with related speeds that are only valid at “standard sea level”.

There’s the functional usage of the term, though, which is based upon the speed of sound at sea level, with an average air-density. For example, when the military/CIA calculates how fast a CF-71 Blackbird is going, stated in terms of mach-whatever, they don’t adjust for the altitude at which it’s actually flying.

In the case under consideration, there can be no mach-scale. Sound doesn’t really travel, at that altitude.

Exactly. The density of the medium is so low there’s no effective longitudinal propagation.

Also, there’s the issue of airspeed v groundspeed. I remember a few years ago, a newspaper reported a transatlantic flight travelled faster than the speed of sound, simply because its distance / duration was slightly greater than than the speed of sound. In actuality, the aircraft had travelled in the same direction as the airflow, so its airspeed was nominally subsonic.

We got what Mongoose meant, though. Relative velocity of the probable impacts on a body staying in a roughly geo-synchronous position. Supers in space wouldn’t have to establish an orbit, since their power of flight is essentially magical and infinitely powered, as long as they have whatever energy source grants them their powers, assuming there is one.

Oh, and I meant that people don’t adjust for the difference in air density which causes a difference in the speed of sound at the different altitudes. They calculate how fast sound moves at sea level with average air density, etc., and then they use that as the standard measurement of mach-whatever. I imagine that the instruments show the speed traveling through the actual air, at the current altitude, rather than measuring the distance traveled relative to the ground.

The miles cleaned isn’t enough to worry about. How many miles would you add up if you lined up all of the paint chips and astronaut gloves that he found up there?

He could probably get a good recycling fee from all of the Russian satellites he recovers. “What? That thing was just lying there on the side of the orbital track. It looked like someone had just thrown it away.”

However much they’re paying, it’s not enough. The scrap metal value of that garbage he’s picking up is likely more than minimum wage, and that doesn’t even factor in what he COULD be making if he just headed over to the asteroid belt and started prospecting. Gold, diamonds, rare-earth metals, even straight iron ore, just sitting there!